A welcome change from the unattractive phones Sanyo usually puts out, the M1 is an appealing, if chubby (3.6 by 1.9 by 0.9 inches, 3.8 ounces), flip phone with a smooth shape and an internal antenna. Big, clear music control buttons, a huge color screen, and stereo speakers are on the outside of the handset; open it to find an extremely sharp 320-by-240 color internal screen and a keypad of small but well-separated buttons.

The M1's flagship feature is its full gigabyte of internal memory. Really, that's not such a big deal: You can get 1GB microSD memory cards for most phones for $40 nowadays. But Sanyo uses that gigabyte as a springboard to give the phone as much multimedia juice as possible.

Music, video, and Java are all strengths here. You can hook the M1 up to your PC via USB cable to send and receive files, or use Bluetooth 2.0 to transfer music and pictures to and from a PC or a Mac. Speeds were refreshingly fast, at 55 KBps for Bluetooth and a thrilling 2 MBps for USB, much faster than I've seen on most other phones. The built-in music player takes MP3 and iTunes M4a files (but not protected files bought from the iTunes music store), and it plays .M3u playlists you create on your PC. I wish it synced with Windows Media Player or iTunes directly, though.

You can listen to music using the built-in 2.5mm headphone jack, with standard music headphones using the included 3.5mm adapter with built-in mic, or with Bluetooth headphones. Music sounded positively terrific to us, and Sanyo claims 18 hours of playback time.

For video, you have the ability to send over 3GPP video files, which the phone will play in full-screen mode at 15 frames per second, or watch Sprint's own streaming video service. Streaming videos were rather blocky, but they didn't have to rebuffer mid-video. Most of Sprint's video channels played in full-screen mode, except for the pay-per-view "Sprint Movies," which played in an annoying little box with a big border around it.

The M1's 203-MHz processor and excellent Java compatibility make the M1 a top-notch platform for mobile games and applications, including Melodeo Mobilcast podcasting software and the new Opera Mini 3.0 browser, both of which I tested. Games and applications perform noticeably better than on the Sanyo 8400 and on Sprint phones in general.

On the other hand, the handset's 2-megapixel autofocus camera is rather disappointing. Although the autofocus is fast for a camera phone, at 0.7 seconds of shutter delay, and although both exposure and color balance were adequate, outdoor photos showed annoying compression artifacts, and indoor photos looked hazy. You can print directly to printers using USB or Bluetooth. The video mode, on the other hand, took pretty decent 320-by-240, 15-fps videos, albeit with somewhat robotic-sounding audio.

The M1 is also a phone, of course, and it plays this role pretty well (though not quite as well as the Editors' Choice Sanyo 8400). Reception seems about the same (excellent). Although as happens on some internal-antenna phones, reception was strongly affected by the way you hold the phone in your hand. The speaker and speakerphone are both blaringly loud, but there was a bit more audio distortion than on the 8400, making for a fuzzier sound.

I connected Plantronics Bluetooth headsets without a problem. The speaker-independent voice dialing is clumsier than VoiceSignal's (it doesn't default to using prompts, and it forces you to page through lists of commands), but it works once you memorize the system. Battery life was pretty good for a phone with these features. I recorded 4 hours and 21 minutes of continuous talk time.

Simply put, the Sanyo M1 rocks. So why does the 8400 keep the Editors' Choice title? Basically, the Sanyo 8400 still strikes the sweet spot of low price, terrific voice quality, and decent multimedia features. If you want the ultimate in multimedia performance on Sprint, though, the M1 is worth the extra bucks.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts...

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